


a change that came to pass

by sidneysid



Series: All The Splintered Light [1]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: AU Fic, Gen, deliberately vague on the details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:02:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4940683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidneysid/pseuds/sidneysid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave, formerly D08-S, remembers when Hal gave him his name.<br/>He's getting used to it. He's getting used to a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a change that came to pass

It was a still, windless night when Hal named Dave. 

Hal had twisted his lips, a measured expression of self-deprecation to soften unwelcome words. It was a very different from the expression he’d had when D08-S had told him his identifier, the first time they’d met.

“You should have a name, don’t you think?” Hal had said. “I mean - I need something to call you that doesn’t stand out so much! Something a bit… easier to say.”

There are things that swim underneath what Hal is saying; implications that D08-S could see the edges of, even as he was those first few weeks. The identifier he has makes Hal uneasy. There is something like pity hanging about him, and D08-S knows that this is what Hal had wanted to soften, had wanted D08-S to overlook.

“How about… Dave?”

Not David, just Dave, a single syllable to call his own.

It was a reference to something that D08-S had never heard of. Hal had looked far away when he mentioned that. He did not elaborate. D08-S did not ask for elaboration. He had nodded his head, once, and that was that. He was named. 

Hal’s self deprecating smile grew, and as the corners of his eyes lifted it changed. There was something about it that made Dave feel as though his reaction had been right. He smiled back.

-

His name is Dave, not David, but the two names are linked by a shared meaning. He had looked it up on Hal’s handbuilt terminal one night when he couldn't sleep, when the sound of wind scouring the walls raised the hairs on his arm and made his ears strain to hear over it, checking for voices and footsteps.

David means beloved. Dave does not think he is beloved to anybody. He is fairly certain he never has been. He is also fairly sure that this should upset him. 

On cold windless nights, when he can hear everything and still cannot sleep, he wonders if perhaps it does. If something inside him is rebelling against the idea, and he just doesn’t know how to identify the feeling. Upset and distress were not useful emotions for something like him to have. 

Rebellion was not something he was supposed to have, either.

-

David can, also, mean friend. Dave is still not quite sure what it means to be a friend. He is not sure what it means to have a friend.

Slowly, Dave has been realising the great extent of what he does not know. 

He can look at a weapon and tell you how it works, how to take it apart and clean it and put it back together. He can speak six languages fluently, knows useful phrases in a dozen more. He looks at people and knows how to knock them unconscious and where he should hide their bodies to avoid suspicion being raised. He can kill a man with his bare hands.

He has never watched a movie - something Hal wanted to remedy immediately when he found out, sitting them down on the beat-up couch in their beat-up safe house, his terminal whirring as he loaded a thumbdrive into it, adjusted the wall projector. Hal had muttered something about ‘popcorn’ as he did so, more to fill the air than to start a conversation. Dave didn’t understand what he meant, but it did not feel important enough to ask. Hal often said things that he expected Dave to understand, forgetting easily the gulf between them. It was not always an unpleasant thing.

It didn’t matter this time, whether Dave understood or not. Just another one of those things a normal person would know - or maybe just something that somebody like Hal would know. 

Dave has figured out, by now, that Hal is not necessarily what most people would call ‘normal’. Secretly, with a touch of guilt, he feels pleased by this. Neither of them are normal. Maybe they don’t need to be.

-

Halfway through the movie he fell asleep. He realised when he woke up alone on the couch, a blanket settled over him and the terminal softly whirring to itself in standby mode. Dave carefully folded the blanket to put it aside, and only realised Hal had entered at the startled sound he made when he noticed Dave. This time, he didn’t drop his mug. Hal was very used to being alone.

His expression switches into something more wry. Less of the old fear Dave had first seen, now it feels more like a joke shared than a shield. Hal’s thumb wipes away a droplet running down the side of his mug. It smells like coffee, black with sugar just how Hal likes it. “I guess you didn’t like the movie, huh.”

Dave grumbles quietly. “It was okay. Maybe I should pick the next one.”

Hal perks up at the promise the words hold. This time it didn’t work, so they will try again. There are no fatal consequences to something like this. They can afford, sometimes, to make mistakes. Failures will not be punished.

It’s a lesson both of them need time to learn.

-

The name Hal means ‘Ruler of the House’, but it does not fit him the way ‘beloved’ does not fit Dave. Hal has never been a ruler of anything, and Dave has never been beloved. Their names are ill fitting gloves. Dave hopes, despite this, that he could be Hal’s friend. 

He has seen friendships in books and movies now, all the subtle intricacies of this connection. He and Hal do not owe each other anything, not any more. 

They’ve saved each other. They work together, as a team. 

Maybe that’s all friendship is - saving each other, again and again, for no reason other than you want the person to be safe. 

Because you work better together than you ever could alone.


End file.
